Please — City of Wilmington and State of Delaware, we need these Robot Snowplows now:
Yuki-taro takes in snow at the front, squeezes it into rectangular bricks, and excretes said bricks out the back. Try teaching your dog to do that! The bricks can be easily stacked and stored for summer cooling needs – unless those pesky neighborhood kids get at them first!
These Robot Snowplows won’t do much good on I-95 or Rt 1, but seem perfect for clearing side streets and development cul-de-sacs everywhere. And stacking those bricks seems more orderly than throwing more snow onto a pile that may come crashing down on your car as it freezes.
Though only a prototype at present, Yuki-taro’s creators in the snowy city of Niigata expect to have a marketable version ready within 5 years at a cost of under 1 million yen (about $9000). That may sound like a lot, but it’s likely that municipalities would pay the cost and deploy them where needed.